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Energy deal a victory for US |
Johannesburg, Sept 2: After two days of haggling between the US, Japan and OPEC countries on the one hand and the European Union (EU) on the other, governments have reached an agreement over the wording of the final document of the WSSD summit, which now says that countries have to act "with a sense of urgency" to increase the world’s share of renewable energy sources, without setting any specific target. The text also asks countries to phase out energy subsidies that prevent sustainable development. EU negotiators, who have so far been insisting on the setting of specific targets, are now being accused of yielding to the US. Activists are highly disappointed at the watering down of what may have been a promising deal to set firm timetables and targets to encourage renewable wind and solar energies in developing countries. "The Americans, Saudis and Japanese have got what they wanted. It’s worse than we could have imagined," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director of Greenpeace. The UN' summit secretary-general Nitin Desai declared the agreement a "positive step". The final text must now be formally approved by the plenary session. One major target set by the summit is to halve the number of people without basic sanitation by 2015. Targets have also been set to replenish biological resources like fish and forests. Matt Phillips of the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth said: "It is very disappointing to see renewables being abandoned at this stage in the deal. Sanitation is important but for sustainable development poor communities need clean, efficient energy." |